The Gemara (נדה לא ע"א) brings a teaching of Rav Yosef on a verse from Yeshayahu (יב א): אוֹדְךָ ה' כִּי אָנַפְתָּ בִּי יָשֹׁב אַפְּךָ וּתְנַחֲמֵנִי - I will thank You, Hashem, for You were angry with me - Your anger has turned back, and You have comforted me. What does this mean? Rav Yosef offers a parable: Two merchants set out together. One of them gets a thorn stuck in his foot and is forced to stay behind. He curses his misfortune bitterly. But some time later, he hears that his companion's ship sank in the sea. He begins to praise and thank Hashem. "Your anger has turned back, and You have comforted me."
Yeshayahu spoke these words specifically in the context of the geulah. In that future time of redemption, we will look back across all the years and understand with clarity how much hidden goodness was woven into every seeming affliction. Only then will we see what the thorn in the foot saved us from. Only then will we know the depths of "I will thank You for You were angry with me."
Rashi explains the verse with breathtaking simplicity: "I will thank You for You exiled me, and the exile atoned for me. My sin has now been expiated, so Your anger has turned back, and You comfort me." What appeared to be punishment was, in fact, atonement. What felt like abandonment was, in truth, the deepest form of care.
The Maggid of Mezeritch zt"l illuminates this verse with a mashal of extraordinary tenderness. A father who loves his young child touches him - a pat, a gesture of affection - but the child, startled, mistakes it for a blow and begins to cry. And the moment the child cries, the father is overcome with anguish, draws him close, and kisses him.
This, says the Maggid, is the inner meaning of the verse: I thank you Hashem, "כִּי אָנַפְתָּ בִּי" - literally translated, "for You angered in me." The anger was not in You, but in my perception. I read Your touch as wrath. I experienced Your closeness as a strike. But in truth, You acted only out of love - it was never anger at all. יָשֹׁב אַפְּךָ - even the sensation of the "blow," as it were, returns to You: the father who touched the child is himself the one now pained by the child's tears. וּתְנַחֲמֵנִי - and You comfort me, You who were never truly angry, drawing me into an embrace caused only by my mistake. (תורת המגיד, נ"ך ישעיהו)
How consoling and eye-opening. What the Yid experiences as Divine displeasure is, at its root, a gesture of love that his neshamah, in its current smallness, cannot read correctly yet. But when the Yid cries, it brings forth an open embrace.
